Nothing, at this season, is a more pleasing spectacle than the sporting of the young lambs, most of which are yeaned this month, and are, if the weather is severe, protected in covered sheds, till the mildness of the season permits them to venture abroad. Dyer, in his poem of “The Fleece,” gives a very natural and beautiful description of this circumstance:
Spread around thy tend’rest diligence
In ploughing spring-time, when the new-dropt lamb,
Tottering with weakness by his mother’s side,
Feels the fresh world about him, and each thorn,
Hillock, or furrow, trips his feeble feet;
Oh! guard his meek, sweet innocence from all
The innum’rous ills that rush around his life!
Mark the quick kite, with beak and talons prone,
Circling the skies to snatch him from the plain!